Author: Beatrice Bisais Page 19 of 32

Part of the fun of travel is sharing your experiences with the ones you love back home.

Just 20 years ago, you had to wait until you got back home and developed your film to show your family pictures from your trip. Today, of course, things are very different: you can share your photos instantly, in real time, via social media sites like Facebook and Instagram, and apps like the Nixplay app, which lets you send your photos directly to a Nixplay cloud WiFi frame.

Now that we can share our pictures instantly, it’s tempting to share everything – whether it’s a great shot or not. This is especially true when you’re on an adventure trip in an exotic part of the world, and everywhere you look you see beautiful vistas or incredible animals.

But if you really want to wow your audience, and send pictures your family will want to display in their digital frame, follow these tips on taking great photographs of your outdoor adventures.

Plan out the specific spots where you know you’ll want to take pictures.

While your best photo may end up being one you took on the fly, a little planning can still go a long way.

When you’re planning your itinerary, make a note of any locations, landmarks, or activities that you definitely want some photographs of. Then when you arrive, you can have your camera out and ready to go.

Pack your camera equipment in Ziploc bags in order to protect it from the elements.

The lowly Ziploc bag is a photographer’s best friend – even National Geographic photographers, who work in some of the hottest, coldest, wettest, and driest places on earth, use the sealable bags to protect their cameras.

Protecting your equipment is especially important when you’re out in windy or sandy conditions, as a few stray grains of sand can scratch or damage your lens. Ziploc bags will work well for almost any situation, except for boating or water sports. If you’re going to be actually on the water, you should really use a waterproof camera bag.

Accessibility is key.

When you’re trying to capture the excitement and adrenaline of an adventure trip, being able to get your camera out at the right second is vital.

If you’re hiking with a backpack, keep your camera either around your neck or in a smaller waistpack where you can grab it easily.

For sports like skiing, waterskiing, cycling, and other activities where speed is a main feature, you have to make doubly sure your camera is ready to go when you need it. Adjust your settings and lenses before you start, so that when the perfect shot arises, all you have to do is aim and press a button.

Pay attention to light and time of day.

When you’re out adventuring, it’s easy not to notice the time, or how the light looks – especially if you’re absorbed in a mountain climb, or exploring ancient ruins in a jungle.

If you want great photographs, though, it pays to notice if the light is particularly interesting. Foggy and hazy days can make for unique pictures if you work your camera settings right.

As for time of day, there’s a reason photographers call both the hour after sunrise and the hour before sunset “the golden hour.” The light is softer and more diffuse, which makes for beautiful photos. Some photographers extend the golden hour to the hour immediately after sunset too, when the ambient light turns everything faint shades of gray and purple.

Adventure photography is a challenging, but exciting way to stretch your digital photography skills and create great souvenirs of your travels, too. For more photography tips, check out our post “How to Take Great Beach Photos.”

Beatrice Bisais

Bea is Nixplay’s Social Media Manager. She enjoys drinking coffee, reading about wars, and writing stories. Send her a message at beatrice.bisais@nixplay.com.

Since most of us walk around with a smartphone camera all day, every day, there’s been an explosion of interest in digital photography. Lots of people have upgraded to real cameras, but even smartphone cameras can create great, almost professional quality photographs – if you know certain tricks.

As general interest has grown, so too has the number of websites devoted to helping amateurs and pros alike take better photographs. Here are 10 of the best.

DIY Photography

This site is geared toward experienced photographers, offering articles on topics like fixing color casts and lighting objects with flat design drop shadows. It’s especially good for gear-lovers, offering reviews and comparisons of the latest photography products.

Digital Photography School

This site offers a huge variety of tips and tutorials by a team of writers from around the world. Started by photography enthusiast Darren Rowse, Digital Photography School has weekly tutorials as well as a huge library of how-to articles. Beginner to semi-experienced photographers will find this site helpful.

iPhone Photography School

Did you know that your iPhone has a burst mode, which allows you to capture perfectly clear action shots? Or that you can lock your focus and exposure while setting up a shot?

These are just a couple of the hundreds of tips that you’ll find on iPhone Photography School, a comprehensive website for the dedicated iPhone photographer. One of the coolest features of this site is the weekly iPhone Photography contest, to which visitors can submit their best iPhone photos. You’ll be amazed when you see just how professional the photographs look, even though they were shot on the original smartphone camera.

Popular Photography

With a modern, hip feel reminiscent of Popular Science or Wired, Popular Photography is a site for photography gearheads, enthusiasts, and professionals alike.

This site also offers a regular contest, Your Best Shot, which takes submissions monthly.

Photography Week

Technically, Photography Week is a magazine, albeit a digital-only one. As such, it requires you to purchase a subscription or single issue to access the content, but if you’re really into photography, it’s worth it.

The content is excellent, featuring lots of videos, interactive articles, and slideshows – and, as you’d expect, the photographs in each issue are exceptional.

Cambridge in Colour

This UK-based site, which was originally created to showcase photographs of the University of Cambridge by the site’s author, Sean McHugh, is an online learning community for photographers of all stripes.

Unlike sites that are more blog-like, with articles ranging over a wide variety of topics, Cambridge in Colour is divided into three sections: Tools, Tutorials, and Forums. This makes it easier to navigate than many other sites.

PhotoNaturalist

If you’re interested in wildlife or nature photography, this site is for you. Full of articles on microphotography, photography ethics, photographing natural phenomena like the Aurora Borealis, and more, PhotoNaturalist has a lot to offer anyone who’s interested in capturing the beauty of nature.

The Photo Argus

This massive resource library could keep the novice or experienced photographer busy for weeks. No matter what you’re looking for, you can find it here: inspiration for your next photo shoot, technical tips for shooting in difficult circumstances, reviews of the latest gear, and more.

Photo Pathway

This beautifully designed site features photographs and blog posts by Greg Brave, a photographer living in Melbourne, Australia. It’s a great site to visit if you want a personal take on what it’s like being a photographer, photographing your travels, and other fun topics.

We hope these sites give you the inspiration and know-how you need to make your photographs even better. And when you’ve achieved that perfect shot, try sharing it with friends and family on one of our Nixplay Cloud WiFi Digital Frames!

Beatrice Bisais

Bea is Nixplay’s Social Media Manager. She enjoys drinking coffee, reading about wars, and writing stories. Send her a message at beatrice.bisais@nixplay.com.

When you consider that photography has only been commercially available for a little under 200 years, it’s amazing to think how far we’ve come. Photographs used to require special equipment, long exposure times, special chemicals and facilities for development, and trained photographers. Today, a five-year-old can take a decent picture with her dad’s smartphone and share it with people across the world in a matter of seconds.

How have we gotten to where we are today? How have we achieved the amazing technological advancement of being able to take a picture with a phone, and send it to a digital frame, a computer, or another smartphone – even if those devices are located thousands of miles away?

Here’s a brief history of this fascinating technology.

1839: Commercial photography is introduced.

Scientists and tinkerers had been experimenting with capturing images on paper using light and chemical reactions since the 1600s. However, it took until 1839 for photography to become practically viable.

This was the year that Louis Daguerre released the daguerreotype, a photographic process that could create detailed images with just a few minutes of exposure time. Up until this point, capturing a photograph required very long exposures – hours or even days – and practitioners had no way to prevent the image from eventually fading away.

The daguerreotype changed all of this, and grew hugely popular. This was thanks to a growing middle class that wanted the affordable portraits that photography made newly possible.

1884: George Eastman invents the first film.

Between the invention of photography and the invention of film, photographers had to lug around boxes of metal photographic plates and toxic chemicals, along with their cameras. This wasn’t just inconvenient – it could also prove dangerous.

This all changed in 1884, when George Eastman of Rochester, New York invented paper coated with a dry gel – they were called negative papers – that could be used instead of metal plates. This was, essentially, the first film.

1888: Eastman invents the first Kodak camera.

With the invention of the first mass-marketable camera, the Kodak camera, amateur photography became a possibility. The first Kodak was a simple box camera – to take a picture, users pressed a button that opened the shutter, allowing light to pass through the lens and onto the film.

1900: The first Kodak Brownie camera was placed on the market, making photography accessible to virtually anyone.

Eastman’s Kodak Brownie camera is what introduced snapshot photography to the masses. The simple, easy-to-operate camera sold for just $1 – affordable for nearly everyone – and film sold for 15 cents per roll. The Brownie was a massive commercial success, with families using them for portraiture, travelers taking them to record their adventures, and even soldiers taking them with them to war.

1935: Kodachrome color film, the first commercially viable color film, was introduced.

While color photography had been possible since the 1860s, it wasn’t until Eastman’s company, Eastman Kodak, invented Kodachrome film that color photography was accessible to the average consumer. This heralded a new age of photography, with Kodachrome’s popularity peaking in the 1960s and ‘70s.

1990s: Digital cameras became widely available.

In the 1990s, digital cameras became affordable for the first time, leading to an explosion of interest in the digital photography market.

Among the first commercially available digital cameras were the Apple QuickTake 100 and the Nikon N90S, both of which were still fairly expensive – between $800 and $1,000. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s digital cameras continued to do down in both price and size, gradually replacing film cameras almost completely among amateurs.

2000s: Smartphone cameras become ubiquitous.

As the smartphone takes over the cell phone market, nearly everyone has a camera on them at all times. We take pictures of everything we always have – our travels, our family, beautiful landscapes, wildlife and nature. We also start taking finding less traditional photographic subjects, like food, or our feet standing in a puddle. And of course, this era also sees the rise of the selfie.

2007: Nixplay and our parent company, Creed Technologies, were born, bringing the ability to share photos in a meaningful way to people around the world.

Nixplay’s parent company, Creed Technologies, was created to connect people to technology in a meaningful way. That goal is behind everything we do at Nixplay. Whether we’re designing a more beautiful digital frame like the Nixplay Iris, or making our Nixplay app better than ever, we want to give people the ability to connect with each other in real time – no matter how far apart they may be.

With Nixplay’s digital frames, users can send photos directly to the frame from their smartphone from anywhere in the world using the Nixplay app. We’ve come a long way from the daguerreotype, haven’t we?

To find the Nixplay digital frame that’s best for your family, visit the Nixplay store.

Beatrice Bisais

Bea is Nixplay’s Social Media Manager. She enjoys drinking coffee, reading about wars, and writing stories. Send her a message at beatrice.bisais@nixplay.com.

Nature is always photogenic, but there’s something special about fall. The color of the leaves, the quality of the light, even the clothes that your human subjects wear – all of it contributes to making fall one of the best times of year to take great photos.

With so many opportunities for beautiful photos, you want to be sure you’re making the most of the season. Here are some tips on how to fill your digital frame’s playlist with striking fall photos.

Include your kids

Fall offers unique pleasures for children. Jumping in leaf piles, running through a brightly colored wood, eating caramel apples, and carving pumpkins are just a few. If you’ve got kids, take them out for a special fall experience – and make sure you bring your camera along.

A pumpkin patch makes for a fun backdrop, especially for babies and younger children. Older kids might still enjoy jumping in a pile of leaves, which makes a festive action shot. And don’t forget all the photo ops that Halloween brings. Document your little ones’ trick-or-treating with both posed and candid shots.

Take a family photo

Outdoor family portraits are a must during this time of year. Not only do they make for wonderful Christmas cards, but they also carry a certain special sense of nostalgia. It must have something to do with all the important family events that happen during the season: going back to school, Halloween, Thanksgiving.

Take your family’s overall style into consideration when you schedule your photo session (or take your own if you’re into digital photography). Are you a bunch of goofballs? Go playful. Outdoor enthusiasts? Grab your gear and get a picture of everyone in their canoes. Driven, ambitious professionals and future professionals? Take an elegant picture against a stately outdoor setting.

These portraits, whether formal or casual, can make lovely additions to your fall photo playlist.

Bring in the pets

Pets are a part of the family too, so you’ve got to include a few fall images of your furry friends in your playlist.

Dogs and leaves go together like peanut butter and jelly, so take your dog out for a romp in the woods and see what ensues. If she’s a young, active pup, she’ll probably spend most of her time jumping over logs and chasing fallen leaves. Capture her energy by walking ahead with your camera and then calling her, taking a shot as she barrels her way toward you.

If your canine companion is more sedate, he may enjoy watching the scenery from a cozy spot against a tree.

And don’t forget about your feline friends – even if your kitty is indoors-only, you can get some beautiful images of her calmly taking in the foliage through a window.

Don’t forget the landscape photos

What would a fall photo playlist be without images of the season’s gorgeous colors?

If it’s a bright, sunny day, try shooting leaves against the sky – the blue and orange, red, or yellow will create a striking photo. On cloudy or misty days, head into the woods and take some long-range foliage shots. The shadows will be gentler, and you’ll get a nice soft image.

Other great photo ideas include shooting fallen leaves against blacktop or grass. You can sharpen the colors and contrast with a filter or another photo editing tool to make a perfect fall photo.

Shooting a bird’s eye view, straight down at the ground, is one way to do this; however, if you want to get more creative, try crouching down in the grass and focusing on a single leaf in your foreground.

For more dramatic pictures, try shooting one lone tree against a wide sky, or even a single leaf. These will make for unique celebrations of the season’s beauty, and add an artistic touch to your fall photo playlist.

Want to create more great playlists to share with your friends and family? Read our posts “How to Create a Meaningful Playlist to Share Your Trip with Loved Ones” and “A Lifetime in Pictures: Suggested Playlists for Your Gifted Digital Photo Frame

Beatrice Bisais

Bea is Nixplay’s Social Media Manager. She enjoys drinking coffee, reading about wars, and writing stories. Send her a message at beatrice.bisais@nixplay.com.